High Five for Friday

Today I'm linking up with Lauren to share some of my favorite things from the past week. (P.S. I have more than 5 this week)

1) On Saturday, Grant and I picked my sister up from the airport! She usually comes to spend Mother's Day and the week after with us. Grant so loves her visits!

2) Mother's Day! We had a very low key day this year. I wanted to wander around the flea market for a bit, then we stopped in to see my Mother-in-Law, and we went out to dinner after that. My sister and I topped it all off with hot fudge sundaes that night toasting our mom. Mother's Day is always a little rough and this year hit me harder for some reason. But the sundae sure hit the spot :)

Grant made me a card at school!

Pretty flowers! Husband knows I love tulips :)

Sundaes for Mom

3) CHEESE! With visits from my sister come goodies from home. Including my favorite chocolate covered pretzels and CHEESE CURD! Cheese curd is THE BEST and I've been snacking on it all week.

4) On Monday, we packed up and drove to the NC Aquarium at Fort Fisher! I had never taken my sis here before and Grant loves "the fishies" so we did a little day trip down there.

ROAR! (says Grant)

I never knew they had a little shark petting tank!

5) Playtime at the park! We have some great parks just down the road and I haven't had time to get there lately. This week we took a nice long walk around both parks and worked in some playground time for Grant too.

6) Family movie night! We do that every once in a while and I really wanted to try to do it while my sis was here. So we rented Brave (super cute movie, by the way) and popped popcorn on the stove (so good!) and cuddled up for movie night.

So much that we needed two bowls!

7) We got a pool! Ok, so it's just an inflatable one. BUT it's deep enough that Grant can really play in it and it's big enough that I can sit in it :) Grant loved it the second we started putting water in it and we had to drag him out when he was so cold that he was shaking from head to toe.

Yes, he's in his undies.

HAPPY FRIDAY and I hope you have a great weekend :)

Three Bears Acres

Warning: Picture Overload!

A couple weekends ago we decided to check out a place in Creedmoor called Three Bears Acres. I had gotten discounted tickets through Living Social (I'm loving that site!) and they were expiring soon so we went one Saturday afternoon. 

It's a huge area out in the middle of nowhere that encourages kids to play, play, play. Grant eyed their jumping pillow immediately so that was the first "station" we hit. 

They said we could play too, so I did.

Grant got a little nervous with all the bigger kids on there so he didn't stay on the jumping pillow too long. We hit the paint wall next (and I'm pretty sure he could have stayed there all day.

Learning to use a stencil with Daddy.

It's a huge washable white wall and they keep all their paints, brushes, and stencils in an old crib. They also have a bucket with sponges to wash off your masterpiece. I think Grant had just as much fun wiping it off as he did painting on it.

Mud kitchen - Grant didn't play much here

A sandbox of course. I'm pretty sure Grant could have stayed here all day too.

So I had noticed this big plastic tubes in their main field. I figured they were for kids to run and/or crawl through and I honestly thought that was pretty lame. But then I saw people rolling in them and realized that's what they were for. So fun! Grant absolutely loved rolling in the big tube. He laughed the whole time, it was so funny!

And then we went over to the sling shot station. Grant loved shooting the tennis balls with the big sling shot. 

The flags are their targets.

 Next up was the archery station. Husband and I played more here than Grant did. We did let him try to do it because there was little chance of him getting hurt but he's just not coordinated enough yet to do something like that.

Then we went into the woods for more fun.

They have a huge toboggan slide and Grant would have ridden that until they closed. I went with him each time and I'll admit it was really fun. It went a lot faster than I though it would and it had a little hump in the middle to go over. We had a good time with that one.

They also have a large "tree house" area with slides, rope nets, and swings.

And hanging under the tree house area were all these fun swings. Grant's favorite was what we the spiderweb swing. It looked like so much fun and Grant loved it.

It was a great afternoon. Husband and I had so much watching Grant play outside having such a good time. They also had paddle boats but we didn't make it down to the lake. After the tree houses we had a picnic in the back of the truck which Grant thought was so great because he saw them have a picnic on Jake and the Neverland Pirates. "We gonna have a picnic like Jake?" So cute.

My thoughts on Three Bears Acres:

• It's not cheap entertainment. $13 for kids, $7 for adults. I'm kinda cheap about stuff like that so a $13 admission for a kid is steep to me. Since I got our tickets through Living Social, it was much more reasonable and I will keep an eye out if they have tickets on there again.
• Pack food (snacks, lunch, drinks, etc.)! Thankfully I did. There are no restaurants nearby and only a small concession stand at the park.
• If you're not into letting your kid get dirty, don't go. And if you're not into letting them get into stuff on their own while you sit on a bench nearby, don't go. 
• Plenty of places for parents to sit if the kids are playing on their own. I liked that because once we got to the tree houses, we parked it until Grant wanted to swing.
• The bathrooms were surprisingly clean when we went. Especially for an outdoor play place.
• Not for very small children and not stroller friendly. We brought our stroller but didn't use it. And I'm so glad. I saw so many parents struggling to push their strollers around. 

So, would we go again? Yes. Again, I was put off by the price at first. But looking back at those pictures and how much fun Grant had, I would definitely go again. I think we'd probably make a day of it, instead of an afternoon. 

High Five for Friday

I've seen my friend, Elizabeth, do this on her blog for a while a now so I'm going to give it a shot too.

Today I'm linking up with Lauren to share five of my favorite things from the past week.

1) On Saturday we took Grant to Three Bears Acres and had a wonderful afternoon of playtime and fun followed by a yummy picnic in the bed of Husband's truck.

2) I went on a mini cleaning spree (it didn't last long) and found some old pictures of Husband as a kiddo. Including this one that shocked me with its resemblance to Grant!

3) I declared Grant officially potty trained!

Seen here very proud of himself after going potty alone - with crooked  pants.

4) Grant and I made yummy treats for the well-deserving staff at Grant's school for Teacher Appreciation Week.

Browned Butter Nutella Swirled Blondies - yum!

5) I ordered Grant's school pictures! While I've never been the biggest fan of school pictures or the posed studio Sears type pictures, I loved this and had to have it!

Happy Friday! 

I'm looking forward to next week when I'm on vacation :)

Potty Trained

If you read my last post about potty training then you know that a few weeks ago Grant was in the neighborhood of being potty trained. Well now, I am officially declaring him potty trained. I'm sure that putting this in writing is some sort of bad omen, but there it is. Potty trained. 

The peeing has been good for quite a while but now he's got the hang of number 2 too. He's almost always wearing real underpants unless it's bed time (or a weekend morning and we haven't taken him out of the pull-up yet). Day care sent home all his pull-ups so he's napping in underpants and going to the bathroom well there too. We're even brave enough to put him in undies when we go places.

So...hooray! Potty training, well, sucks. But potty trained is pretty freaking awesome.

The above picture is one of my favorite recent pictures. I took it right after Grant woke up from a nap. He had gotten up, gone to the bathroom, then came to find me. His pants were so crooked and his shirt was not only tucked into his pants but his undies too. He doesn't want to ask for help, he likes to find us and show us that he did it himself. That's usually how mornings go too. He still needs some help with number 2 so we're trying to get him to call to us when he's done. We're working on it (because it's no fun chasing a toddler with poopy butt around the house!).

So that's that. I can't believe it. Accident-free for weeks now. I probably could have made the delcaration sooner but whatever. Potty trained - woohoo!

New Recipe: Butter Dip Biscuits

I have tried several new recipes lately but I haven't been documenting them like was I before. This one was spontaneous and turned out great so I decided to take pictures and blog about it. We were grilling pork chops and I can't remember what our side dish was - baked potatoes maybe - and I've been eyeing this biscuit recipe for a while so I thought I'd give it a try. 

There is one missing because I took the picture after
removing one to cool off for Grant.

Butter Dip Biscuits

Ingredients:

• 1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 4 tsp. granulated sugar
• 4 tsp. baking powder
• 2 tsp. kosher salt
• 1 3/4 cups buttermilk 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Spray 8-inch square baking dish with non-stick cooking spray. In a microwave safe bowl (or the dish you'll be using for the biscuits) melt the stick of butter in the microwave.
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Then pour in the buttermilk. Stir until a loose dough forms, batter will be a bit sticky. 
3. Press the dough into the prepared baking dish, on top of the melted butter (its easiest to use your hands). Take a knife and cut the dough into 9 squares before baking.
4. Bake for about 20-25 minutes, rotating dish once during baking. If you notice that some of the butter that is coming up to the top is getting brown, you can take a paper towel and dab around the edges. Oven do vary, but basically biscuits should be golden brown on top and spring back to the touch.

Recipe Source: The Country CooK

Notes/Suggestions:

• Brandie at The Country Cook said to use unsalted butter for these biscuits but I don't use enough to justify that purchase. So I used salted butter and cut down on her amount of salt but I didn't cut it out completely.
• I felt like 4 tsp of sugar was too much so I cut it back just a bit and that was a bad idea. The biscuits were good but tasted, to me, like they were missing just a little something and I'm sure it was that little bit of sugar I cut out.
• I am the type of person that always puts something on biscuits. But I ate one and a half of these just plain because they were so good. Grant ate one and the other half of my second one (a bread lover like his Mama) and husband managed to put down two as well. They were well recieved all around. We were all big fans of the awesome crispiness of the outside. 
• These biscuits are soooo easy and really good. They went great with dinner and would go well with a good breakfast or brunch. They are a little spongier than a traditional biscuit but still really good.
• Also from The Country Cook, this fun marshmallow recipe HERE